Women I’ve slept with, Part 4 : We didn’t.

I can’t say I believe in love at first sight, although that comes with the caveat that these days I’m not sure I know what constitutes romantic love anyway. But I have had a couple of moments when I’ve looked across a room, seen someone, and there’s been a bell that’s rung in my head telling me that that was someone special and I needed to know them. Really needed to know them. Marilyn was one of those people.

We were both in an odd little university club and I vividly remember the moment I first saw her. She was across the bar, chatting away in a small group of people when I walked into the room and as soon as I caught sight of her I knew. Quite what I knew, I don’t know, but I definitely knew it.

Although we were forced into eachother’s company, there was no need for us to socialise, but with a little alcoholic courage we started dating. The one thing that stands out in my mind about her was that we had fun. What ever we did, we laughed. She was lovely and she made me want to be lovely to her.

Obviously, just because she was lovely didn’t mean I didn’t want to get her naked. Although on reflection I think maybe I didn’t. Yes, I wanted to get naked with a girl, and yes I wanted to have sex, but I don’t think I specifically wanted to have sex with Marilyn. I certainly didn’t want to not have sex with her, and as we were dating, trying to get into her knickers (rather than anyone else’s) was a logical progression. But fucking her was a secondary consideration.

We dated for about 4 or 5 months, and we did end up in bed together, but I think only on one occasion. As with Sita (my Number 2) and Elizabeth (my Number 3) we squeezed into Marilyn’s single student bed in her tiny single student room, in what was actually quite an up market student flat. By this stage I was starting to know my way around a woman’s body, and even to an extent what to do with it. And so, on this one occasion I let my fingers do the talking.

With 3 other notches on my bed post, I had a pretty good idea how to get a girl wet, I knew roughly how to finger fuck, and I had even started to discover the wonders of the clitoris. On our one night of nakedness I did my best to treat Marilyn to the benefit of my limited experience. And it turns out it was a not insignificant treat. Not only did she enjoy my fingers slipping rhythmically in and out of her moist cunt, but my clit strumming definitely saw her decidedly out of breath. With hindsight, I have no way of knowing if she actually orgasmed, but as she lay in my arms she informed me she had “never been that far with a boy before.” (Words vividly engraved in my memory.)

Sadly very soon after we parted for the holidays and before the next term could start, someone else stole Marilyn’s heart. We still saw each other regularly over the next couple of years, and just before she sat her finals I called her up and invited her for lunch. I felt the meeting was a little stilted, and this was probably not unsurprising. My motivation was, after all, similar to that of Rob in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (and I emphasise that’s Nick Hornby’s book, not John Cussak’s film) when he revisited an ex from his list of Top Five Most Memorable Split-Ups, that being that I wanted to check Marilyn and I were still friends. Although embers still glowed for her in my heart, I was entirely genuine about this. As we stood on the corner of the road, surrounded by red sand stone tenements, (and yes, even today I could tell you which street corner it was, despite not having been within 50 miles of it for more than a decade), as we were about to part company, quite why I told her I wanted to check we were still friends, I know not. I did not shoot myself in the foot, after all I knew the guy who she had met that fateful summer break was still the apple of her eye and I didn’t have a leg to stand on, never mind a foot to shoot. If I was mistaken and the afternoon had been a little awkward for Marylin prior to that moment, it certainly became so as I related my motive to her. I wished I hadn’t. And I wish I could remember how we parted – was there a hug, or a peck on the cheek ? I suspect not.

Our paths crossed a couple of times after that, as we had related circles of friends. Marilyn and her beau were by then married and coincidentally (though unrelated) the last occasion we met was when I first met Geri (my Number 6).

But the story does not end there. Some 20yrs later, I recieved a “friends request” from Marilyn courtesy of a certain Mr Zucerberg. Casting an interested eye over her “friends list” it seemed I was to be only her third social networking contact. And the first from our long disseminated circle of university friends. My pulse raced as I discovered those ageing embers had still not been entirely extinguished and, just as a teenage, love-sick, romantic puppy, I penned the following:

You crawled out of the woodwork last Tuesday
On some social networking site
20yrs back I asked you if we’d still be friends
And it turns out that maybe we might

I know that you’re married with children
Or you were the last time that I heard
Though I can’t help but think it’s significant
Of your friends I am only the third

Are there cracks in your marriage and love life
Do you long for romance from the past

I never finished the third stanza.

It transpires she is still happily married with 3 kids. Hubbie is still a bit of an action man, and their holidays are still spent enjoying all those wilderness activities we all used to do two decades ago, which my lifestyle now inhibits, and which I couldn’t persuade my Wife to do if Her life depended upon it.

Even now as I write this, my heart flutters. Futures are never how we expect them, and what ifs are but pointless fantasies. But sometimes when you know you know, maybe you really are right.

The corolory, of course, is that memory clouds our judgement and a sense of loss or failure can add all manner of hues to memories. I’ve often wondered where in me such onging feelings come from and I think they’re bessed summed uip by a Pink Floyd lyric (One Slip): was it love or the idea of being in love?.

Indeed, but there is no black without white, no sorrow without joy. I wonder how life would be without the knowledge of the extremes.
The comfort of mediocrity.
I currently find myself in a relationship that hasn’t really worked for a long time: would I know, or even care, if I had not experienced the highs?

certainly for the best. The past is dead. I refuse to try to recapture it because everyone and everything changes, including me…the old memories remain and cause old feeling to stir, but nothing can recapture the past precisely enough. I say let the past remain perfect in its innocence.